15 months

On Sunday, February 7, 2010 Corinne turned 15 months old. On Monday, February 8, 2010 she had her 15-month visit with her pediatrician. The nurse took her vital statistics:
Height: 30 1/2"
Weight: 22 lbs, 12 oz
Head circumference: 46cm
Teeth: 8; 2 lower (central incisors), 6 upper (central incisors, lateral incisors & first molars)

Her doctor declared her a poster child for a 15-month old since she is hovering right around the 50th percentile for all measurements, and he was impressed with her verbal and manual communication skills. She received vaccination shots in her leg and wailed loudly to convey her discomfort. I felt terrible for her and we cuddled for a while once the deed was done. The good news? She shouldn't have to endure any shots at her 18-month visit.

And now, a gratuitous photo of our growing baby girl

House and Home

Brett & I looked at houses a couple of years ago, but we decided it wasn't the right time for us and so we found a great apartment in an awesome area of town where we've been living for the last 2 years. It's where we lived during my pregnancy with Corinne, it's where we lived during her first year of life. This place is where we went from being a couple to being a family, we've grown so much here and I will always have special memories of our time together in this place.

Our original plan was to stay here until Corinne got closer to school-age. We've always known we would move because we're not currently living in a place that would allow her to attend the schools we want for her. But, when the government extended the tax credit for first-time home buyers we decided to take a look at what was available on the market in the areas we were interested.

We scoured online postings and set up a meeting with our real estate agent to look at seven houses; the third house was 'it' for me. I was hooked and every other house paled in comparison. We made an offer, countered twice and decided to walk away when we couldn't settle on a price. We set up another meeting to look at more houses the next weekend...nothing was clicking for me. We went to an open house...still nothing. With some encouragement and support from our parents we decided to make one last offer on the house that was stuck in my mind. They accepted our offer!

Brett & I officially became homeowners yesterday! Our house is a 3-bedroom cape cod with a partially finished basement, 2-car detached garage and fenced backyard with a paver patio. We are looking forward to moving in and making this house our home.

Communication

Several years ago Brett was studying to be an American Sign Language interpreter, and while he was in school he taught me a lot of sign language and we would practice together. Eventually I took some classes and was encouraged to become an interpreter myself, but I had already been through 5 years of higher education to obtain my Bachelor's degree and I wasn't really looking for a career change. It was much more of a hobby for me. As Brett progressed through the program it became apparent that an old injury made it very difficult for him to sign at the speed and duration required for an interpreter. After much thoughtful contemplation he decided he would have to withdraw from the program and instead he became an automotive technician.

Signing with Corinne has come naturally for us and we started implementing a few signs pretty early on in her life. One of her first signs was "bottle" and we've branched out from there as her world expands and her experiences change. She currently has a repertoire of about 15-20 signs, some of the more commonly used are food, drink, more, dog, bath, no, yes, help, hat & shoes. I imagine that as the weather gets warmer she will lose the sign for hat, just as she has essentially lost the sign for bottle since she drinks from a sippy cup during the day and only uses a bottle first thing in the morning and right before bed.

As she becomes more verbal she will probably lose the sign for the words she can say. This is sort of happening right now with “dog” – she knows the sign, but she has recently learned how to say “arf!” and so most of the time when she sees a dog she will verbalize with her word instead of with her sign. Interestingly enough, this is really her first crossover word. She has words for other things in her environment and uses them consistently and correctly. Some of her words include diaper, beads, teeth, ball, up and daddy. You’ll notice that she doesn’t have a sign or a word for mama and, for now, I’m not holding it against her.

I think that having some signs and some words really helps her get her point across, she has a way to communicate and really tries to make us understand instead of immediately getting frustrated and having a melt-down. Now, don’t get me wrong; she’s 1 and so there are plenty of temper tantrums, grunting, whining going on in our house…but I feel like we are giving her some tools to work with so that she doesn’t have to be completely dependent upon us to interpret her needs and wants.

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo

I don't work on Mondays, I keep Corinne. During the winter months we usually keep a pretty low profile and I end up doing laundry most of the day. This past Monday started out as a typical day and after lunch, she went down for a nap. But, after only 30 minutes (she usually takes an hour & a half to a two hour nap) she woke up and decided it was time to get up. In an effort to lull her back to sleep we drove around for a little while and ended up near campus, she was still wide awake and in a great mood so we went in to visit Gma Chris and then some of my coworkers. She refused to perform AT ALL for Gma Chris' office, but she was a show-off for my office; she showed them how she can say "daddy" and went through a bunch of her signs, she showed everyone where her nose, eyes and ears are, she even explored a little bit which is awesome because she's usually attached to my hip when we're in unfamiliar territory.

After our work visit we picked up Uncle Scott and headed to the zoo. It was pretty cold, but we were well bundled and decided that if we needed to warm up we could always visit the aquarium. When we got there we found out that the zoo would be closing in about 40 minutes, bummer. We have season passes so we weren't too disappointed and used our time wisely to tour the North America loop. This was Corinne's first zoo visit when she was really alert and excited about the animals, and they delivered. She got to see swans & ducks, a buffalo, an otter, the bears, the big cats and some moose. They were all out and active. The buffalo even got spooked by a bird while we were watching him and he ran across the field. The otter was being very playful and kept swimming around right in front of the glass display area - every time he swam out of view Corinne would look around to try to see where he disappeared to...it was very cute.

We had a great Monday & I'm looking forward to taking another trip to the zoo soon with Brett so that he can experience her contagious excitement. Getting to see the world through her eyes is awesome.